Vicar and Miracles

Waipukurau Press, Volume XXII, Issue 289, 21 November 1928, Page 3

Vicar and Miracles

HISTORY OF THE GOSPEL.

AN ANIMATED DISCUSSION.

There was some livelinecss in the Modern Churchmen’s Conference at Cambridge, England, on September 20, when, in a discussion in which opposite views were expressed as to the importance of the historical element in Christianity, one of the women members protested against a Staffordshire vicar’s reference to the part which falsehood or illusion might have played in religious instruction in the past.

Dr F. C. Burkitt, Norrisian Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, said the. Christian religion must be the doctrine of the Cross or it was nothing. If the career of Jesus was to have a permanent meaning for them the Cross could not be regarded as a tragic incident, a regretable talc, a stormy sunset of an otherwise perfect day. It must seem to be something inevitable, significiant, typical, and, he would add, gracious. The familiar phrase, /< thc grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,” did not mean a state of mind produced by conscious imitation, but something involving the gift of inspiration from outside.

On the question of the present-day authority of the Bible, Dr. Burkitt said: “As modern churchmen we aro concerned with to-day, and no new solution of our difficulties in dealing with our old organisation that does not explicitly recognise the diminished authority which is now accorded the utterances of antiquity, whether of the Bible er the Fathers.

'Both to Protestants and to Catholics those utterances were the nails and rivets with which their fabric of religion was The rivets are now most of them rather loose; nevertheless there is in the gospel history, that history itself and whatled up to it, an element which Christians cannot discard if they are to remain Christians.” Mr M. J. Okeshott, Fellow of Gbnville and Cains College, Cambridge, contended that the belief in the necessity of the- prima facie historical showed no sign of permanence or necessity. It was one of the characteristics of Christianity continually to conform to and lead the civilisation or culture of its adherents. The failure of Christianity to meet the demand put upon it by present requirements would be more certain evidence of its demise than almost any alleged break in the Christian tradition.

The Rev. T. F. Royds, vicar of Haughton, Staffs, said that evolution of religion and of science consisted in unlearning what it believed to be true. Honesty was the best policy. Miss Jessie Chitty, of Silvertrees, near Winchester, protested against Mr Royds’ reference to the element of 1 ‘falsehood or illusion” in past teaching.

Mr Royds replied that illusion was the word he intended.

Miss Chitty: Then would you frankly withdraw’the word falsehood? Mr Royds said his contention was that events sometimes proved that what was not known to be falsehood at the time had been fallible, but when it was found to be falsehood they must be honest about it. “I am not one of those who teach their children of a six days’ creation,” he added. “Surely one reveals the truth gradually to children just as God has revealed the truth gradually to the human race.” The Rev. C. J. Sharp, vicar of Ealing, who had made him cease to believe in the Virgin Birth, and in miracles such as the multiplication of the loaves and the turning of water into wine. Those scholars made him more sure than over of the reality of the Person of Christ and of the applicability of that teaching to modern conditions.